


like monuments

by Neffectual



Series: From An In-Ring Perspective [18]
Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: M/M, Mirrors, Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8373253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: Tyler picked up the mirror at an auction house - but did he choose it, or did it choose him?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SurviveEternity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SurviveEternity/gifts).



> “People who worship only themselves get a slick, polished look -- like monuments. Too bad they had to go so soon.”  
> ― Vanna Bonta, Degrees: Thought Capsules

Tyler picks it up at an auction house while he’s in England – Sotheby’s, probably, because he always says that Christie’s reminds him of an old ex-girlfriend with a ridiculous name, so he rarely goes there, and besides, Sotheby’s keeps a chair for him on lots in which they think he’ll take an interest. It’s a huge mirror, takes them nearly three weeks to ship it to Tyler’s Bel Air mansion, and Tyler nearly goes mad with fury over that, livid about the whole thing as he makes raging phone calls over and over, demanding that they make it arrive sooner, that it’s in the house tomorrow, or woe betide everyone at the other end of the phone.

When it arrives, it’s gorgeous, just like Tyler knew it was going to be, placed in situ in the atrium, and it’s all marvellous until, as he walks past it, Tyler thinks he sees something wrong with the reflection. He steps closer, and for a moment, he’s looking at himself, and then the image seems to flicker, a wizened face staring back at him, palm up where his own touches the glass, and Tyler pulls back his hand like he’s been burned. Then he’s left, staring at his own reflection, searching in it for a trace of the horror he’s sure he was looking just a moment before. It isn’t there. Maybe the stress is getting to him, maybe he needs a few days with Fandango to calm himself, sipping mai tais and not thinking about wrestling, or mirrors, or what he’s going to look like when he’s forty. Maybe that will clear his head.

It's three months before he’s back in the Bel Air house, traipsing through Dubai and Monaco and a dozen other places where he can get a dozen designer brands with a leisurely wave of his hand, and wrestling dragging him through towns where the outlet malls are all that keeps the population from leaving for more populated areas. Fandango travels by his side the whole time, bringing the good sheets and never complaining about carrying his bags, and Tyler revels in someone treating him the way he’s always known he deserved. The women he's been with have always expected the five-star treatment, and it’s nice to have it given back in the same manner. It doesn’t hurt that Fandango is so easy on the eyes that he’s practically made for Tyler’s casually raking gaze in public, and calm coquettishness in private. They barrel through the door, and Fandango has hardly put the bags down when Tyler’s on him, kissing him with a fervour, and before he knows it, they’re pressed up against the wall opposite the mirror, and he’s watching his own hands roam Fandango’s back and ass, watching himself throw his head back in delight. As his eyes close, feeling Fandango bite with just the right force at his throat – not enough to bruise, but enough to feel something – there’s a movement in the corner of the mirror, almost out of frame, and there it is again, that wizened little face, but Fandango bites down, and Tyler’s head hits the wall, and by the time he’s stopped having a snit at Dango and looked at the mirror again, he’s half-convinced he never saw it.

Later than night, Tyler heads down the stairs at 3am, because sleep eludes him after travel, and he’s pretty sure his sleeping pills are in his carry on, which lies mostly unpacked by the door. He has to pass the mirror, and this time, it isn’t barely seen. It’s there, staring back at him, and he flinches back so strongly that he nearly thuds into the wall. It’s grotesque; wrinkled pale skin, sagging jowls, wispy hair and thin, bloodless lips. It looks at him, and cocks its head to the side, as if taking him in, and then its mouth curls, showing yellowing teeth, thin lips revealing receding gums, and Tyler realises that the expression is meant to be a smile, as it raises its hand to wave its fingers at him. He thunders up the stairs and leaps into bed with Dango, who barely moves, because he sleeps like… not the comparison Tyler wants to make right now. He folds himself under his boyfriend’s arm, eyes fixed on the bedroom door, before they stutter to the bedroom mirrors. When Fandango wakes up, Tyler’s curled against him, in a fitful sleep, and every mirror in the room is covered.

Fandango doesn’t get it, which surprises Tyler. He’s always thought of his boyfriend as the smart one in their relationship – Tyler’s quite content to be the pretty one, thank you – but he seems to think is this about Tyler being afraid of mirrors because he’s afraid of how he looks. Far from it, Tyler’s not stopped posting selfies, he still knows he’s physical perfection, knows how good he looks and would do even if the internet stopped affirming what he already knows about himself. He doesn’t need the mirrors, he’s certain of that, and he won’t have any of them uncovered. Leaving the house behind him, he sighs with relief, snaps a quick selfie, and checks his hair in the wing mirror of the rental Dango’s got them for the drive to the next show. There’s nothing there but his own perfection, complexion perhaps a little pallid, maybe a slight darkening under his eyes, but nothing a few moments alone with his powder compact can’t fix. He’s alone in the mirror, just like he should be.

The Bel Air house stands empty for two weeks, but before too long, it’s the most convenient place to stay, and Tyler stalks in, taking in the mirrors with their coverings, and scoffs at himself, plucking them off. Fandango isn’t with him, off doing something far less important that somehow still seemed necessary to do rather than be with Tyler, but he’s not fazed by this at all. He was clearly overworked – he looks so much better now, skin clear and even, tan settling in nicely, eyes bright and sharp. As he admires himself in the atrium mirror, the image distorts, and it’s there, instead, staring back at him, that same smile, twisted and horrifying even as it presses a hand to the glass and Tyler fights the urge to scream. It’s wearing… it’s wearing his clothes, he realises, and in the silence of the house, he can hear it breathing, a panting wheeze that sounds choked off, wet, gasping.

“Leave me alone,” Tyler says, and hates his voice for shaking. “I didn’t do anything to you.”

The creature mouths something back, but Tyler doesn’t want to look at that face for long enough to try and lip read, and he has no interest in what it’s saying, anyway.

“Get out of my mirror, and leave me alone.”

He’s halfway up the stairs before he hears the creak, and wonders if telling to get out of the mirror was, perhaps, a mistake. He’s out the door as quickly as he can, barely remembering to engage the alarms, and then he’s speeding down the road in his Lamborghini, leaving burnt rubber tyre tracks at the end of the drive, and on his way to a hotel. He’s not sleeping in a haunted house all by himself. Maybe he can sell the house and never set foot in it again.

The next night, though, finds him back there, sitting in front of the mirror with a lit candle as the figure comes back, looking at him with mild interest, as if it has nothing better to do. It’s wearing his clothes again, and the flickering candlelight just serves to show all the hollows in its face, the way the skin hangs off its bones like a poorly-draped sheet, the way it looks like someone has already killed it and then tried to make it walk around again. Worse than that, it looks like Tyler, and that thought makes his heart stop beating for a moment. When he studies it, the thing staring back, blinking slowly as he peers closer, he can see the resemblance, the way the nose sits, the brightness of its eyes, the long neck – it’s him, but impossibly older, looking like a million years were dropped on him at speed.

“How do I stop myself becoming you?” he asks, in a hoarse whisper, and when the figure shrugs, that’s a familiar motion, too. “How do I stop this happening?”

When he doesn’t show up for work, Fandango comes to the house and finds him there, in front of the mirror, cheeks sallow and pale. He hasn’t eaten, or slept, just stared into the mirror like he’s hoping to find the mysteries of time, the secret to eternal youth, but all he sees is his own face, looking older by the second. Fandango tries to drag him away, to take him for food, to take him to bed, to get him out of the house, but he bats his hands away, and so Fandango just sets up shop behind him, with protein bars and a mug of coffee, and hooks his chin over Tyler’s shoulder, smoothing his hand through Tyler’s greasy, unwashed hair and ignoring the fact that his perfect lover smells like the guy on the bus who wants to sit next to you.

When the figure appears, Tyler hears Dango gasp, knows for the first time that he’s absolutely seeing this, that it’s real, and then he feels the shudder run through his boyfriend and tenses up. If this is what he is to become, he needs – but there’s another figure, behind the wizened old man Tyler recognises as himself. He looks at it for a moment, and then it hooks its chin over mirror Tyler’s shoulder, and it’s so plain, so clear. The old man behind the older Tyler smiles, and it’s so familiar that Tyler can feel himself melt, even when it comes from an ancient and wrinkled face, like an apple that’s been left out in the sun. It’s Fandango, it has to be, it could never be anyone else, and he wraps his arms around his Tyler’s body just as Tyler feels his boyfriend do the same.

“Come away from that mirror, love,” a voice like the creak of an ancient door say, and it takes Tyler a moment to realise it’s coming from inside the mirror. “You don’t need to look at that.”

“I was so young. So beautiful,” the older Tyler says, voice soft, but Tyler can hear himself in it, without a doubt.

“You’re still beautiful,” the Fandango in the mirror replies, and kisses the top of his Tyler’s head. A smile starts on the mouth of the wizened man Tyler has to see as his future, and grows wider and wider, his face alive with delight in such a way that, for a second, he really beautiful. For a moment, as Tyler watches an older version of himself, he almost feels jealous. “Come on, you need to sleep.”

“Goodnight,” Tyler says, before he can stop himself, but the two in the mirror don’t give any indication that they hear him as they slowly and stiffly walk out of shot. Tyler turns away from the mirror, to face his Fandango, and smiles. He doesn’t know for sure, but he’s fairly certain that if he looked at his own face in the mirror, he’d look a lot like the old man he’s going to become. And for the first time, he’s not afraid about what the future might bring.


End file.
